MANUAL DE PREVISÃO ASTROLÓGICA

CESAR EBRAICO

OBJETIVO DO MANUAL

Impossível tirar proveito do que a Astrologia – um conjunto milenar de hipóteses empíricas sobre determinadas relações entre fenômenos terrestres e extraterrestres – sem ter uma maneira científica de testar a validade dessas hipóteses, aplicando-as, errando, acertando e circunscrevendo em que, de fato, elas podem contribuir e em que é fantasioso esperar que elas contribuam.  Se você for levado a ler este pequeno livro até o fim e aplicar o que ele ensina, você será capaz de fazer isso, testando você mesmo a validade das hipóteses que são apresentadas aqui.    

CIÊNCIA

Para evitar mal-entendidos quanto ao que me refiro ao chamar de “científica” a maneira de se testar uma hipótese, cumpre esclarecer o que está sendo entendido aqui como “ciência”.

Ciência como processo

Conhecimento científico tem dois contextos:

Contexto de descoberta:

O contexto de descoberta não tem regras.  Arquimedes saiu seminu por Atenas gritando “eureka” (achei), depois que entrou em uma banheira cheia d’água e notou que o nível de água subira, concluindo que o volume de água que provocara essa subida deveria ser igual ao volume da parte de seu corpo que ele havia mergulhado na banheira;  .Kekulé sonhou com a fórmula do benzeno, que tanto procurava;  dizem que Newton foi levado a sua teoria gravitacional, que afirma que quaisquer duas partículas do universo se atraem gravitacionalmente por meio de uma força que é diretamente proporcional ao produto de suas massas e inversamente proporcional ao quadrado da distância que as separa porque, descansando sob uma árvore, uma maçã caiu-lhe na cabeça...  A produção de relevantes descobertas científicas provocadas por eventos casuais – algo que, em inglês, tem o nome de “serendipity” – é extremamente relevante e não tem o menor cabimento estabelecer regras que pretendam impugnar sua legitimidade.

Contexto de validação:

Uma vez proposta uma hipótese, para ela chegar ao status de ser considerada cientificamente válida, ela tem que apresentar

1) Coerência formal, nas ciências meramente formais, como a matemática.  Estabelecem regras arbitrárias de coerência e estar “certo” é obedecê-las.  As regras de coerência da geometria euclidiana, são, por exemplo, diferentes das regras de coerência das propostas por Bernhard Riemann e o que está “certo” para uma pode estar “errado” para outra, sem que seja necessário obter nenhum dado empírico para validar tais adjetivações;

2)  Coerência formal e empírica, nas ciências factuais, como a Física, a Biologia, a Psicologia etc..  Aqui, não basta que se afirme algo, como os termos da lei gravitacional de Newton, é necessário verificar se as previsões por essa lei produzidas correspondam – coerência empírica – com os dados obtidos na realidade;

3)  “Revisão pelos pares” (“peer review”).  Uma vez produzida uma hipótese – tenha sido ela obtida por ‘serendipity’ ou não – ela deve ser vazada em linguagem suficientemente clara para ser entendida por todos aqueles capazes de verificar o quanto tal hipótese é ou não sustentada ou não pelos fatos obtidos por eles (os “pares”);

Ciência como produto

1)  A afirmação de que a Terra gira em torno do Sol deve ser considerada “científica”? 

Depende, porque o que leva uma afirmação a merecer o epíteto de “científica” não é sua verdade, é o tipo de processo em que ela se fundamenta ou pretende se fundamentar.  Portanto, o heliocentrismo é científico na boca de Galileu e não o era na boca dos sacerdotes egípcios adoradores do Sol.

Ciência teórica e ciência empírica

Organizemos o que foi visto até agora em uma classificação das ciências:

1)  Ciências formais.  Ex.:  matemática;

2)  Ciências factuais:

2.1.  Teóricas:  aquelas cujas previsões são dedutíveis de leis gerais, supostamente impossíveis de ser infringidas.  Ex.:  Física;

2.2.  Empíricas:  aquelas cujas previsões se assentam sobre um acumulo de experiência que nos leva a esperar o preenchimento de determinadas previsões, que nem sempre ocorre.  Ex.  Astrologia.

ASTROLOGIA

Frente ao que vimos até aqui, deve ter ficado mais possível de entender minha afirmação de que a Astrologia será encarada aqui como uma ciência factual empírica que estuda determinadas relações entre fenômenos terrestres e extraterrestres.  Para melhor entender que determinadas relações são essas, cumpre classificar os vários ramos do conhecimento astrológico. 

Das ramificações e sub-ramificações da ciência astrológica neste livro só abordaremos o item 3.3.3.  Não vejo melhor maneira de se iniciar de maneira eficaz, passível de ‘peer review’ do que estudando o que se aborda nesse item, seja, os trânsitos astrológicos.  A classificação que ofereço abaixo só serve para que o leitor possa situar o item que vai ser nosso único e específico objeto de estudo dentro do enorme leque de assuntos que nos oferece o estudo astrológico.

Os ramos da ciência astrológica

1)  Astrologia Mundial:  prediz eventos gerais, relativos ao homem e à natureza, esperados ocorrer em um período determinado.  Previ, com um mês de antecedência, a ocorrência de “revoltas sangrentas de populações oprimidas contra os governos que as oprimem”:  na data aprazada, a “primavera árabe” iniciou-se na Tunísia (naturalmente, só previ o “santo”, não o “terreiro” em que ele ia baixar).  Previ, com antecedência similar a ocorrência de abalos sísmicos de grande magnitude:  na data aprazada, ocorreu o tsunami no Japão e a explosão de um vulcão, há séculos adormecido, na Islândia (mais uma vez, só o santo, não os terreiros). 

2)  Astrologia de eventos:  André Barbault é a maior autoridade conhecida em Astrologia Mundial.  Em dezembro de 1985, num Congresso Internacional de Astrologia realizado no Copacabana Palace, no Rio de Janeiro, ao responder a uma pergunta sobre se ele teria alguma previsão relevante para o Brasil, respondeu:  “Bem, em torno de 28 de janeiro do ano próximo, haverá uma profunda alteração nas regras do jogo econômico neste país”.  Exatamente na manhã de 28 de fevereiro de 1986, o presidente Sarney anunciou para o povo brasileiro o lançamento do plano cruzado!  Não consigo deixar de ficar estarrecido, tentando entender como esse cara previu isso, com tal exatidão!  A propósito, as centenas de pessoas que estavam assistindo aquela conferência, podem testemunhar quanto a isso...

3)  Astrologia pessoal:

3.1)  Natividade.  É o chamado “mapa astrológico”.  Ele indica temas que ocuparão posição privilegiada na vida de uma pessoa, independentemente de como serão administrados, o que depende de outros fatores, como a constituição (patrimônio genético + aprendizagens irreversíveis, o chamado “imprinting”), a aprendizagem (reversível) e o entorno do sujeito a que corresponde tal mapa;

3.2)  Interações.  São técnicas que permitem que se construam hipóteses sobre como duas pessoas tenderão a se relacionar.  Recentemente, após haver entrevistado um rapaz de 19 anos, pensei “o mapa do pai desse menino deve ter o planeta Saturno fazendo um ângulo de 180 graus com o Sol do filho”.  Fui verificar:  bingo!  São duas as principais técnicas para que se façam esse tipo de previsão.  Não vou estender-me sobre elas, pois ficam totalmente fora do escopo deste manual, mas não custa nomeá-las.  São:

3.2.1)  As sinastrias;

3.2.2)  O mapa composto;

3.3)  Eventos pessoais.  Há técnicas que permitem que se construam hipóteses sobre o tipo de temática que ficará ativada, durante um determinado período, na vida de um sujeito cujo mapa nativo possuímos.  Vou nomear as principais, mas só a técnica dos trânsitos será abordada neste manual, já que é a que permite com maior precisão determinarmos se acertamos ou erramos nossas previsões.

3.3.1.  Progressões;

3.3.2.  Revoluções;

3.3.3.  Trânsitos;

3.3.4.  Outros (menos relevantes)

3.3.3).  Trânsitos.  Prediz períodos específicos, em que determinadas temáticas ficarão exacerbadas na vida do nativo (chamarei assim o sujeito cujo mapa eu possuo) e, mais do que isso, quando, dentro desse período, espera-se ocorrer o clímax dessa exacerbação.  Já obtive “luvas” correspondentes, hoje em dia, a, imagino, uns cem mil reais (40 mil, em 2004), por, contra meus próprios desejos, apenas refreado por indicações astrológicas, ter retardado, durante dois meses, minha saída de um prédio comercial, onde eu perdia uns 10 mil reais por mês (5 mil, à época) e, note-se, ficando uma pilha de nervos por estar-me dispondo a fazer isso.  De outra feita, uma amiga ia sair de um apartamento que ela adorava porque não conseguia resolver uma infiltração interminável e infernizante.  Olhei seu mapa e disse:  “Essa infiltração deve cessar daqui a dois meses.  Eu não sairia antes disso”.  Ela não saiu.  A infiltração cessou na data aprazada.  Mas, alerta!  Os trânsitos nos permitem prever com relativa precisão o “santo”, não o terreiro que ele vai baixar.  Fiz, certa feita, um erro grosseiro – graças aos céus sem nenhuma conseqüência indesejável – esperando que um determinado “santo” baixasse na dimensão psíquica de um paciente, quando, no fiz das contas, foi na dimensão física que ele baixou.  Nesse tipo de esparrela, hoje em dia, não caio mais.

Os trânsitos:  a melhor maneira de aprender Astrologia

Indiscutivelmente, a melhor maneira se aprender Astrologia é fazer previsões, acertar, errar, investigar melhor quando se errou etc.  Já que, como dissemos anteriormente, a técnica dos trânsitos é a que permite determinarmos com maior precisão se acertamos ou erramos nossas previsões, esse manual vai dedicar-se exclusivamente a ela.  Se o leitor resolver aplicá-la, seus erros vão levá-lo a procurar por si mesmo explicações nos conhecimentos existentes nos outros ramos da Astrologia, enquanto irá tirando proveito das diversas vezes que acertou.

O os pontos sensíveis:

Os dados do mapa astrológico de um sujeito se espalham sobre os 360 graus de um circulo.  Vamos escolher um mapa astrológico como modelo para esse nosso estudo.  Vou reproduzi-lo.  Continuamos na página seguinte:

Como se vê, acima, dos 360 de um círculo, no caso da Astrologia, chamado de Círculo Zodiacal, existe a preocupação de se indicar – vide tabela no canto superior esquerdo da figura – o grau e o minuto (vou desconsiderar os segundos, arredondando o valor final) em que estão situados alguns pontos sensíveis, juntamente com os símbolos gráficos empregados para representá-los.  Teremos, então:

SOL a 14 graus e 28 minutos do signo de Peixes;

LUA a 27 graus e 02 minutos do signo de Câncer;

MERCÚRIO a 22 graus e 16 minutos do signo de Peixes[1];

VÊNUS a 19 graus e 14 minutos do signo de Áries;

MARTE a 10 graus e 28 minutos do signo de Câncer;

JÚPITER a 12 graus e 50 minutos do signo de Libra[2];

SATURNO a 23 graus e 42 minutos do signo de Aquário;

URANO a 21 graus e 09 minutos do signo de Capricórnio;

Como operá-los:

Os pontos sensíveis;

Seus símbolos;

Sol

Lua

Mercúrio

Marte

Júpiter

Saturno

Netuno

Plutão

Ascendente

Meio-do-Céu

Quíron

Os aspectos:  sua natureza e seus símbolos;

Conjunção;

Oposição;

Quadratura;

Trígono;

Sextil (ou sextilha);

As órbitas;

O significado dos elementos transitantes e transitados;

A relação dos trânsitos com a carta natal:  aspectos e casas;

Exercícios.

Sumário

1.       Abordagem científica;

2.       O que é Astrologia;

3.       As ramificações do conhecimento astrológico;

4.       A melhor maneira de aprender astrologia;

5.       As técnicas de previsão astrológica;

6.       Os trânsitos;

6.1.     O que são;

6.2.     O que se pode prever com eles;

6.2.1.  Ênfase temática;

6.2.2.  Trânsitos como 1 dos 4 fatores da equação etiológica;

6.2.2.1.  DNA;

6.2.2.2.  Aprendizagem:

6.2.2.2.1.  Irreversíveis (‘imprinting’);

6.2.2.2.2.  Reversíveis;

6.2.2.3.  Entorno;

6.3.     Como operá-los:

6.3.1.  Os pontos sensíveis;

6.3.1.1.  Seus símbolos;

6.3.1.1.1.  Sol

6.3.1.1.2.  Lua

6.3.1.1.3.  Mercúrio

6.3.1.1.4.  Marte

6.3.1.1.5.  Júpiter

6.3.1.1.6.  Saturno

6.3.1.1.7.  Netuno

6.3.1.1.8.  Plutão

6.3.1.1.9.  Ascendente

6.3.1.1.10.                  Meio-do-Céu

6.3.1.1.11.                  Quíron

6.3.2.  Os aspectos:  sua natureza e seus símbolos;

6.3.2.1.  Conjunção;

6.3.2.2.  Oposição;

6.3.2.3.  Quadratura;

6.3.2.4.  Trígono;

6.3.2.5.  Sextil (ou sextilha);

6.3.3.  As órbitas;

6.3.4.  O significado dos elementos transitantes e transitados;

6.4.     A relação dos trânsitos com a carta natal:  aspectos e casas;

6.5.     Exercícios.

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[1]  O planeta estava retrógrado no momento do nascimento do nativo, mas isso, por enquanto, não nos interessa.

[2]  Também retrógrado.

MANUAL DE PREVISÃO ASTROLÓGICA

MANUAL DE PREVISÃO ASTROLÓGICA

CESAR EBRAICO

Sumário

1.       Abordagem científica;

2.       O que é Astrologia;

3.       As ramificações do conhecimento astrológico;

4.       A melhor maneira de aprender astrologia;

5.       As técnicas de previsão astrológica;

6.       Os trânsitos;

6.1.     O que são;

6.2.     O que se pode prever com eles;

6.2.1.  Ênfase temática;

6.2.2.  Trânsitos como 1 dos 4 fatores da equação etiológica;

6.2.2.1.  DNA;

6.2.2.2.  Aprendizagem:

6.2.2.2.1.  Irreversíveis (‘imprinting’);

6.2.2.2.2.  Reversíveis;

6.2.2.3.  Entorno;

6.3.     Como operá-los:

6.3.1.  Os pontos sensíveis;

6.3.1.1.  Seus símbolos;

6.3.1.1.1.  Sol

6.3.1.1.2.  Lua

6.3.1.1.3.  Mercúrio

6.3.1.1.4.  Marte

6.3.1.1.5.  Júpiter

6.3.1.1.6.  Saturno

6.3.1.1.7.  Netuno

6.3.1.1.8.  Plutão

6.3.1.1.9.  Ascendente

6.3.1.1.10.                  Meio-do-Céu

6.3.1.1.11.                  Quíron

6.3.2.  Os aspectos:  sua natureza e seus símbolos;

6.3.2.1.  Conjunção;

6.3.2.2.  Oposição;

6.3.2.3.  Quadratura;

6.3.2.4.  Trígono;

6.3.2.5.  Sextil (ou sextilha);

6.3.3.  As órbitas;

6.3.4.  O significado dos elementos transitantes e transitados;

6.4.     A relação dos trânsitos com a carta natal;

6.5.     Exercícios.

MASS MURDER

MASS MURDER

CESAR EBRAICO

My name is Cesar.  I am a Brazilian psychologist, and this speech is addressed to the President of the US, Mr. Barak Obama. It has been incited by Mr. President’s recent declaration[1] that the greatest frustration of his mandate is not having being able to control the repeated episodes of mass murder which, in his own words, “has killed more Americans than terrorism itself”.[2].

Mr. President, if you want to be successful in your more than worthy intention of putting an end to such deplorable acts of this domestic kind of terrorism, you should listen to my views concerning the bowling in Columbine.  Let us refresh our memories of the episode.

Eric and Dylan

Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, 17 and 18 years old respectively, were members of upper-middle class American families. They lived in typical large American houses (Dylan’s family had seven cars) and went to one of the best schools in the state of Colorado, in the small town of Littleton, a quiet place a few miles from Denver, which has all of the attractions that large cities usually offer. They did not use drugs. They were the children of stable couples and there were no records of their siblings getting into trouble. Dylan’s father was a geologist and Eric’s was a decorated Air Force pilot. At school, Eric and Dylan were not particularly handsome, athletic or academically brilliant in a way that made them stand out from their peers. Other students called them “losers,” a typically American insult, which undoubtedly left them feeling resentful. One day, armed with a pistol, a carbine, two shotguns and homemade bombs, they killed thirteen people at the school they attended and then committed suicide.

Among the numerous stories published in Brazilian media about this event, one in particular caught my attention, entitled “How was it possible?”[3] It begins with these words:

“Something very wrong, very malignant, lurks in the bowels of American society. When it comes to the surface, everyone asks how is it possible for horrors of this kind to take place in a democratic, rich and powerful country like the United States.”

This country, according to the article, astonishes the world with its

“periodic outbursts of insanity… Time and again, insane people fire at crowds… Nothing similar in terms of gratuitous outbursts of deadly violence is found in other countries.”

Note that the perpetrators of this type of murder do not intend to benefit from any material advantage or in any ideological way and, moreover, do not even attempt to escape unscathed after committing the crime. Quite the opposite: they act in broad daylight and, once the deed is accomplished, their usual behavior is to hand themselves in to the authorities or, as in the case of Eric and Dylan, to commit suicide. Furthermore, such massacres are too indiscriminate to be understood as strictly personal vendettas. Often the murderer simply enters a store or climbs a tower and randomly shoots victims who, more often than not, are unknown to him. Even in a case like that of Eric and Dylan, where the slaughter was committed against members of a school where they felt despised, the shooting was too arbitrary to be considered an act against specific people. Finally, we can add that such crimes are habitually committed by members of a group that, from a material point of view, have a lot to lose: 71% of occurrences of this kind are carried out by middle class white people, while in the case of other kind of crimes, just 36% of the perpetrators belong to this group.  In other words, from the perspective of any palpable gain, mass shootings seem completely senseless, and generate widespread perplexity. 

Could, however, the insane behavior of Eric and Dylan begin to make sense if, instead viewing it as a crime, we view it as a statement?.

The Urge to Speak

Let me repeat: Eric and Dylan were not sufficiently handsome, athletic or academically brilliant to stand out from their peers, and there is no doubt that they resented this. This is what President Clinton had to say about the episode.

“There are a lot of other kids out there who are building up resentment and are outside our reach.”[4]

One journalist responded to this comment by saying:

“In other words, it will happen again!”

And again, and again, and again… A short while afterward, a similar massacre took place.  As one news headline put it: “It has happened again…”

But let’s hold on a second! “Feeling resentment”, is very different from, in Bill Clinton’s words, “building up resentment.”  Frustrated people, despite their dissatisfaction, are capable of keeping their behavior sufficiently rational and organized so as to minimize the harm caused by untoward situations;  traumatized people, on the other hand, become paralyzed in the face of disturbing stimuli, so much so that they are not only incapable of minimizing such harm, but, on the contrary, they are able to push their behavior to unthinkable destructive extremes.  Unpleasant experiences, bad as they may be, can be internally processed and, if they have proper access to verbal expression, stabilize at a level which produces rational adjustments, not open insanity; however, if such access is denied, any experience, no matter how mild, goes through a process of accumulation, rising to the level of trauma, with all of its unwelcome results.  Although Eric and Dylan had reasons to feel resentful at their school – as I mentioned, they were sometimes called “losers” – it is quite apparent, given the degree of disturbance and irrational behavior they displayed, that such resentment did not settle at the level of frustration, but produced indisputable trauma. For this to have happened they must have been raised in a kind of environment that did not allow them to verbally express their emotions.  Unfortunately, this kind of environment, as far as failure is concerned, is a deep-seated characteristic of the American cultural environment

Blocking of verbal expression

Even if there are Koch’s bacilli – the specific cause of tuberculosis – present in my body, this does not necessarily mean I will suffer from that illness, but it is impossible for me to have tuberculosis without Koch’s bacilli being in my body.  A layperson may well say that someone caught TB because he was cold and hungry while in prison. A competent professional would not say this, he would rather say that cold and hunger were mere accessory factors, lowering the person’s immunity and enabling the bacilli to act. Without these bacilli, the cold or hunger could cause someone to die of cold, hunger, pneumonia, influenza, but not of tuberculosis.  A lay person might also say that Eric and Dylan’s resentment led them to murder thirteen people. I wouldn’t say this.  As someone who has been practicing psychotherapy for almost half a century, I would say that, for an effect of this magnitude to have taken place, besides the resentment, a massive exclusion of their resentment from verbal expression ought also to be present.  Besides feeling resentment, these boys must have also felt profoundly rejected when they tried to talk about it and, therefore, they became not just frustrated, they became traumatized, which led to their utterly irrational behavior.

Wanting to get rich is quite different from having a compulsion to do so. Compulsion implies not only a natural attraction to wealth, but a phobia of being poor. Similarly, a compulsion to be successful does not merely imply a natural attraction to success, but a phobia of failure. And a generalized phobia of failure – rather than an understandable preference for success over failure – is a typical feature of US culture that consequently coerces – not merely stimulates! – its members to be successful.[5]  Given the widespread belief that being unhappy is the greatest of all failures, this process leads to the generalized obligation to be happy at all times. This in turn produces extensive blockage among Americans – orchestrated by what I call Pretending Psychology, the overwhelmingly dominant means by which the US tries to deal with mental care, which prevents them from engaging in the indispensable verbal communication of painful feelings. This kind of environment that opposes itself to the necessary processing of unpleasant experiences is beautifully illustrated in a song made immortal by the voice of Nat King Cole:

“Pretend you’re happy when you’re blue:

It isn’t very hard to do.”

No it isn’t hard: it’s stupid! The denouncement of this transcendental foolishness has had some culminating moments in Western literature. In the 18^th century, it was mocked by Voltaire in Candide. One century later, Nietzsche virulently railed against it:

”To attempt the destruction of our passions is the height of folly.”[6]

Less than one hundred years later, the deplorable consequences of the obligation to be happy the whole time were also strikingly described in Huxley’s Brave New World and replicated in Orwell’s 1984.

However, the Americans do not seem to have read, or taken seriously, Orwell, Huxley, Nietzsche, Freud or Voltaire. They have read and taken Napoleon Hill seriously.  In 1937, Hill, a chronic failure who only managed to escape from his misfortunes by advising others to pretend they were well, published his Think and Grow Rich, inaugurating – to use an expression of Diogo Mainardi’s[7] – the “macroscopic con” of Pretending Psychology.  Hill proposed, as an infallible formula for wellbeing, success and personal growth, that we block our conscious access to states such as sadness, discouragement, distress, and so on, considered “negative,” and that we simultaneously work to induce ourselves into states such as optimism, happiness, confidence, and so on, considered “positive.”[8] To sum up, Hill proposed that his readers transform themselves into a vast legion of Candides, the silly disciple of Pangloss, the philosopher of unconditional optimism ridiculed by Voltaire.  And when one of these Candides, tired of saying that everything is all the time OK, picks up a gun and goes on a shooting spree to express with actions the resentment that he has not been allowed to express with words, Pretending Psychology is obviously unable to understand why this happens! 

Those who are acquainted with the ominous effects of regularly blocking any kind of emotion – either “positive” or “negative” – from verbal expression will not be at all surprised that small frustrations build up until they become mountains of resentment, all too often leading to completely irrational explosions of hate.  If, as Nietzsche pointed out, “to attempt the destruction of our passions is the height of folly,” American Pretending Psychology has taken this folly to macroscopic proportions.  In his sagatious book, Conversation, Theodore Zeldin surely had at the back of his mind the insidious transformation of this typically unhealthy American way of dealing with distress into a global disease when he perceptively observed:  

“Today, the revolution that we need lies in the way we speak about failure.”[9]

In fact, Clinton’s comment – “There are a lot of other kids out there who are building up resentment and are beyond our reach” – although accurate in its identification of an accumulation of resentment, contains a big mistake:  to say that this large number of other kids are “outside our reach.” In fact, it is not these children who are outside the reach of American culture – it is American culture that is beyond the reach of these kids, who must have repeatedly tried in vain to make their “negative feelings” heard by it.

How many times must Eric and Dylan have tried to say that something was wrong? How many times did they try to say they were suffering because they were considered losers, only to find that to allow verbal expression of this feeling would push them even deeper into that accursed category of human beings? How many times was their Urge to Speak frustrated, faced with the stupid comment that, as members of the upper-middle class of the world’s most powerful country, everything ought to be OK? How many people, like Eric and Dylan, pick up guns and go on a shooting spree, trying to say through acts what they are not permitted to say in words that something is wrong, that not everything is OK, that, despite all their wealth and abundance, people have the sacred right to suffer, to not be happy all the time, and to unconditionally put in words whatever makes them suffer, no matter how preposterous this suffering may seem?!

That such outbursts of violence are just desperate, vehement nonverbal expressions of protest against an entire community that with one hand gives things, and with the other takes away words, is more than evident:  by shooting into crowds, the deepest intention of these trespassers is not to kill people – who, more often than not, they do not even know – but to kill the ubiquitous and overwhelming deafness to verbal expression of suffering, even of minor uneasiness, that plagues the country. As mentioned before, it is middle-class white people, rather than the least privileged, who commit crimes like those of Eric and Dylan.  The fact is, Mr. President, that the American people are “starving in the plenty”:  rich in things they are craving for words!  And, in a deplorable frequent way, they express their revolt against such verbal poverty by killing people at random. It is appalling that a country whose constitution establishes freedom of speech as a sacred right has ultimately became hostage of a kind of psychology which openly exhorts its citizens not to make use of such a right in their day-to-day lives!  This is surely what is NOT OK! 

Consequences

Pretending Psychology is one of the main causes of another symptom which afflicts American culture: drug addiction. How can people, even wealthy citizens of the richest nation in the world, ALWAYS PRETEND that everything is ALWAYS OK? As soon as the hypnotic primacy of Pretending Psychology starts to fail – which, sooner or later, always happens – the next stage is compulsive consumption. This can involve the following (not necessarily in this order): consumer goods in general, food (hence America’s alarming rate of obesity), alcohol, marijuana, crack, illegal and legal drugs (such as Prozac, a clone of Soma, the pill the state distributes freely in the Brave New World to keep the people chronically and moronically happy).  Let us not forget that 40% of cocaine production is consumed by Americans, who make up less than 5% of the world’s population.

The Remedy

Mr. President, focusing the fight against the aforementioned symptoms on the destruction of the arms industry, of the mafias that produce illegal drugs and on the unstoppable discovery of miraculously effective nutritional diets is an impotent, naïve strategy.  Efforts should be focused on reducing people’s vulnerability to the appeal of these mafias. Money spent on mental health programs aimed at reduce this vulnerability will have an immeasurably greater return than that used to combat those who sell guns, crack or fatty foods, and the only way to reduce this vulnerability is cleansing the American culture from the hold of a Jurassic kind of psychology – extolled by singers, film directors and a self-help literature moronically inspired by Napoleon Hill – which coerce the Americans to be artificially and permanently OK.  If this cleansing is not carried out via a huge project of psycho-sanitation, no matter the amount of guns in the market, mass murder will continue to occur.  Encircled by the choir of the chronic like those just mentioned…

Outside the United States

The situation described above brings with it an additional problem:  neurosis is contagious. The United States exports culture. The country has found foreign markets for its dreadful verbal habits, which it is exporting together with its periodic outbursts of murderous insanity, fatness, and drug addiction. These exports are well under way: 16 children were killed at a school in Scotland in 1996; 35 tourists were killed in Australia in the same year; and a shooting spree at a shopping mall in São Paulo in 1999 claimed eight victims (three dead and five injured) – and only eight because the perpetrator, a 24-year-old medical student, was unable to switch his Cobray sub-machine gun, capable of firing 960 bullets a minute, from intermittent to automatic mode.[10]  Given the contagious nature of neurosis, it would be wise not only for the US but for all other nations to start to equip themselves with the antidote:  to implement a new kind of verbal communication that allow all emotions not only the so-called positive ones - to become words.  Paradoxically enough, “pathology” (from the Greed “pathos”, emotion + “logos”, discourse) in its proper sense, is not a problem, it’s the cure[11].

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[1]  Obama’s June 18, 2015 statement at the White House, sonn after a gunman killed nine worshipers at a church in Charleston, South Caroline: "Now is the time for mourning and for healing. But let’s be clear: At some point, we as a country will have to reckon with the fact that this type of mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries. It doesn’t happen in other places with this kind of frequency. And it is in our power to do something about it."

[2]  This article is an adaptation of a chapter of my book “A Nova Conversa” (The New Conversation).  EBRAICO, L.C, Rio de Janeiro:  Ediouro, 2004 (soon to appear in its English version).

[3] “Como é possível?” in Veja magazine, year 32, edition 17, April 28, 1999.

[4] Ibid.

[5] A similar analysis can be made for Japanese culture. The phobia of failure there is as ever-present as in US culture, but while the extroverted nature of the Americans may reach a point in which this phobia is expressed via unbearable episodes of mass murdering, Japanese introversion tends to produce an alarming suicide rate, particularly among teenagers and children. So we shouldn’t be surprised that the saying “Why get an ulcer, if you can give them?” is American rather than Japanese.

[6]  NIETZSCHE, F. Op. cit., p. 129.

[7] MAINARDI, D. “Império do Plágio,” in Veja magazine, November 20, 1996.

[8]  Painstakingly emphasized by the widely Neurolinguistic Programming, a technically sophisticated variation of brain-washing.

[9] Zeldin, T., in his book, “Conversation”.

[10] I was completing the originals of “The New Conversation” when, in Germany, a student committed a similar massacre at a school from which he had been expelled. Incompetence to deal psychologically with failure continues to be exported on a large scale.

[11]   As the word “nosology” – derived from “nosos”, the Greek word for “illness” – is at our disposal to make reference to mental and physical disorders, it is quite intriguing that the term “pathology” – derived from “pathos” – is overwhelmingly preferred to name such states.  Implicitly equating “feeling” to “being ill” is illness itself.